Have you read much by Saramago? Just wondering which of his I should try on next. I noticed there's a sequel to Blindness. But I'm not sure I want to visit this world again right away.

I think the only other Saramago I've read is Ensayo Sobre la Lucidez (I think the title in English is Seeing), which is good, but not as good as Blindness. But some people I trust when it comes to such things have said Cain is worth reading.

Thank you, friend. I'll check that one out when next I come back around to this guy.

It's a frightening tale about child about to go trick-or-treating, searching for her candy-carrying plastic pumpkin in a house filled with "smiling" bats and "friendly" ghosts. It's like American Horror Story for infants.

Two more things: The World Within the Word by William H. Gass. Gass might be the finest writer of the last 50 years, here is an excerpt from the first essay, "The Doomed in Their Sinking," which is on suicide.

Crane went sudden as a springboard. The Gulf gave nothing back. My mother, I remember, took her time. She held the house around her as she held her bathrobe, safely doorpinned down its floorlength, the metal threads glinting like those gay gold loops which close the coat of a grenadier, though there were gaps of course...unseemly as sometimes a door is on a chain...so that to urinate she had to hoist the whole thing like a skirt, collecting the cloth in fat pleats with her fingers, wads which soon out-oozed her fists and sprang slowly away...one consequence...so that she felt she had to hover above the hole, the seat (clouds don't care about their aim), unsteadily...necessarily...more and more so as the nighttime days drew on, so that the robe grew damp the way the sweater on a long drink grows, soggy from edge to center, until I found I cared with what success she peed when what she swallowed was herself and what streamed out of her in consequence seemed me.

Also, Mick a while ago recommended Joyelle McSweeney. Her most recent poetry collection Percussion Grenade is a little miracle.

No offense, but if you're looking for literature of the "down and out" and people "living on the margins," you should look beyond white dudes. Try Nina Revoyr's "Southland," Karen Tei Yamashita's "Tropic of Orange," "Personal Days" by Ed Park (my favorite out of all of these listed here), or "The Guardians" by Ana Castillo.

_________________"I wish that I believed in fate / I wish I didn't sleep so late"

"The real truth about it is: no one gets it right / The real truth about it is: we’re all supposed to try"

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